8.17.2010

guest bloggers : poppytalk.

Hello and greetings from Vancouver! This is Jan from the Canadian design blog, Poppytalk and I'm honoured to do a guest post here for Summer while she's away on vacation. Design is Mine is one of my favorite blogs and I always stop by to be inspired!

I post a lot about affordable art and as I was perusing online the other day I came across these fun 45 rpm prints and thought I'd share them here. How can you not help but like these giant re-creations from a few of the greatest single releases of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

UK artist, Morgan Howell's large original painting of each single is photographed in super high resolution and printed directly onto a canvas sleeve, (68cm square), then a big black disc with a printed label goes inside. The slots are hand-cut and the centre is drilled so the art can be mounted on a chrome central spindle which doubles as a wall fitting. All prints are hand finished, complete with crinkled edges and small tears to resemble a giant 3D single ready to hang on a wall. Available through here. A little bit about each single (taken from here) after each image.

Apache, The Shadows

The recording for 'Apache' was done at the EMI Abbey Road Studio in London, June 1960. Singer-guitarist Joe Brown had bought an Italian-built guitar echo chamber. He didn't like it and gave it to Hank Marvin. Marvin developed a new sound using the chamber with heavy vibrato using the tremolo arm of his Fender Stratocaster. Percussion was by Tony Meehan (drums) and Cliff Richard, who played a Chinese drum at the beginning and end to provide an atmosphere of stereotypically Native American music. It topped the UK singles chart for five weeks, a month after the recording.

Paranoid, Black Sabbath

After seeing a large queue waiting to see the Boris Karloff film 'Black Sabbath,' the 'Earth' band changed its name in August 1969, deciding to create the musical equivalent of horror films. 'Paranoid' was written in the studio at the last minute. As Bill Ward explains: "We didn't have enough songs for the album, and Tony Lommi played the (Paranoid) guitar lick and that was it. It took twenty-five minutes from top to bottom." The single was released ahead of the album in September 1970 reaching #4 in the UK.

White Man, The Clash

White Man in Hammersmith Palais' helped The Clash assert themselves as a more versatile band musically and politically than many of their peers, and it broke the exciting but limiting punk mould that had been established by the Sex Pistols; from now on The Clash would be "the thinking man's yobs". The single was originally released in four different coloured sleeves - yellow, green, blue and pink.

I Can't Explain, The Who

'I Can't Explain' was the A-side of the group's first single released under the name The Who. The track also features on The Who's 1971 compilation album 'Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.' In the album's liner notes, Townshend noted the song's similarity to the hit single 'All Day and All of the Night' by The Kinks. "It can't be beat for straightforward Kink copying. There is little to say about how I wrote this. It came out of the top of my head when I was 18 and a half."